Well, he tried.
After President Donald Trump and his @realDonaldTrump account were suspended from Twitter Friday, he tried to post several tweets from @POTUS account.
Twitter quickly deleted tweets shortly after they were posted to the official presidential account on Friday night, but not before people could capture them.
Trump was permanently suspended from the social network after hundreds of Twitter employees signed a letter to CEO Jack Dorsey calling for Trump’s ban.
“As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone even further by banning freedom of expression and, tonight, Twitter employees coordinated with Democrats and the radical left to remove my account from their platform, to silence me” , Trump said in a deleted @POTUS tweet.
In a series of tweets, the president who is stepping down promised that he would be “building” his own platform.
The @POTUS account, which went from President Barack Obama to Trump when he became president, remains active, but @teamtrump, the Trump campaign account, was also suspended. Elsewhere, Reddit has banned the subreddit Donald Trump.
Trump’s cascading bans and suspensions at various tech companies this week follow a long period when Twitter and Facebook, among other big names in social media, were reluctant to limit Trump’s activity. These companies have long faced scrutiny for not taking action on harmful content in their posts.
Twitter tightened restrictions on a tweet from President Donald Trump on Wednesday after a crowd that supported Trump invaded the Capitol. The video was later deleted. Today, Trump’s account has been permanently suspended.Twitter screenshot
“After a detailed review of recent tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them, we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement to violence,” @TwitterSafety tweeted when Trump was banned on Friday.
The “incitement to violence” referred to the riot on Wednesday at the Capitol prompted by Trump’s call for his supporters to protest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. A pro-Trump crowd stormed the Capitol, causing lawmakers to evacuate the building and interrupting a joint session of Congress aimed at certifying the Electoral College vote making Joe Biden president. The violent scene resulted in the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police officer.
Twitter temporarily suspended Trump Wednesday for his baseless allegations that the election was fraudulent. At first, Twitter limited Trump’s video message to supporters, in which he told them to leave Capitol, while maintaining his disproved statement about the election. The tweet was blocked for replies, replies and likes “due to the risk of violence”. Later, the video was removed completely.
Facebook and YouTube also removed the video. Later, Facebook banned Trump for 24 hours. Not long after, Facebook and Instagram banned Trump indefinitely, at least until Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
Before Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, he posted a video in which he endorsed a smooth transition to a new administration, admitting that Joe Biden had indeed won the election without saying his name. However, he later said he would not attend Biden’s inauguration.
Twitter initially took action on Friday after Trump tweeted the following messages from his @realDonaldTrump account.
“The 75 million great American patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE for a long time to come. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form !!! “
“To all who asked me, I will not be inaugurated on the 20th of January.”
Twitter cited the tweets in a summary of why the social network opted for a permanent ban.
“These two Tweets should be read in the context of broader events in the country and in the ways in which the president’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior in this report in recent weeks” said the company. “After evaluating the language of these Tweets in relation to our Glorification of Violence policy, we determine that these Tweets violate the Violence Glorification Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately suspended permanently from the service. “
The breach of context said that the mention of “giant voice in the future” and Trump’s claim that he did not intend to take over “is being interpreted as yet another indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an ‘orderly transition’ plans to continue to support, empower and protect those who believe he won the election ”.
Trump supporters climb the western wall of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. The violence resulted in the deaths of five people and the evacuation of parliamentarians from both sides of the corridor.Jose Luis Magana | AP
Twitter also noted that “plans for future armed protests have already begun to proliferate on and off Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.” The company also detected another worrying result of Trump’s statement about not attending the opening:
“The second tweet can also serve as an incentive for those who are considering violent acts that the inauguration would be a ‘safe’ target, since he will not be attending.”
On Twitter, people joked that Trump would have to make a MySpace page or use the first lady and confessed to the account of cyberbullying fighter Melania Trump. The latter possibility seemed less of a joke than a real possibility after @teamtrump tried to share Trump’s topic on Twitter on Friday night before being suspended.
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Amy Kuperinsky can be reached at [email protected] and followed in @AmyKup on twitter.